I'm a big fan of several 90's FPS games, especially Doom 2, Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior and Rise of the Triad. Quake was a game I also liked a lot way back when it first came out, but I kinda got tired of it way faster than the other games mentioned above. The endlessly murky, dour surroundings, repetitive music and overall one-note atmosphere really grinds on my nerves after a while. It also doesn't help that the gameplay just isn't all that much fun after a while. The weapons mostly just copy-paste the Doom lineup, but with a downgrade or two. The lightning gun that replaces the BFG is really unimaginative and boring. There's essentially 3 machine gun like weapons in the game. The enemies also get kinda boring after a while. The fat ogre dudes that lob grenades at you are the most fun to fight in the long term, but most other enemies get stale - unlike the incredibly clever lineup of enemies in ID's older game, Doom 2. The blue, bouncing exploding goo blobs that you start encountering later in the game are super tedious and never fail to elicit a groan from me. Two mission packs are included as well, but they're mixed at best. MP1 is pretty bland and only manages to add poorly designed levels, lame weapons and rather annoying new enemies. MP2 is more fun, but kinda lazy, with new weapons just being re-skins with beefier firepower. At least the level designs are ok, but sometimes they really manage to pull off some spectacularly annoying level segments. Overall, I'd say Quake hasn't aged well. It sure was neat seeing "real" 3D after the pseudo-3d of Duke and Doom, but I'd much rather go back and play those technologically inferior games instead. They had actual fun gameplay in spades. Not to mention how the embarassingly outdate Rise of the Triad was more fun than a stack of 1.000 Quakes. I bought Quake on GOG recently and wrote all of this because I was reminded why I hadn't touched it in years...
I remember playing this back in the 90's and I remember not liking it much. Still, I love 90's first person shooters, so I thought it seemed like a lot of content for a small price - and it is. Problem is, it really is awful from top to bottom, all of it. The music is shit, the sound effects are low quality and repetitive. Moronic sense of humor, bad controls, non-existent collision detection, bad balance between weapons and enemies, ugly textures and even uglier enemy designs. On top of that, the weapons are almost all a terrible idea and the convoluted level design is some of the worst you will ever see. I honestly cant say one good thing about this game.
I'll make this quick. I'm a huge fan of the original game and a fellow Dane, so I really wanted this game to be good. The problem is, while the team behind the game made sure to closely imitate a lot of details about the original, they don't seem to have much understanding of gameplay. The playable characters all move insanely fast, despite most environments being cramped and most enemies even standstill much of the time. Mostly your are under machinegun fire, which can't be dodged anyway AND you will be hit constantly without even being able to see where it comes from, since the tiny enemies blend in with the environments. This one is a flat out game breaker for me. I like the updated soundtrack, but the graphics are bland and just look like any old shitty WW2 shooter from around 2000. No visual flair what so ever. Compare the flame wall kill animation in this with the original: Without words; that will say all you need to know about the blandness of this remake compared to the original.
